Lost in time: pictures of China in 1988 pt1.
In 1988 my wife and I had an opportunity to travel through China. Only a year or so before, China had opened it's borders to let tourists in. Hotels only recently opened or were still partly under construction. We traveled to Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Xian, Guilin and Guangzhou, mostly by plane or train, where tourists traveled "soft seats".
Recently I scanned the negatives and photo prints. They give a unique insight in a China that has long since vanished. The obvious tourist spots were dominated by people from mainland China mostly wearing Mao-era clothing, many in uniform and the odd foreigner. After all these years it was difficult to locate some of the more casual photo's.
The photo's were shot on Kodakcolor Gold 100. For the black and white I used Kodak T-Max 400. The negatives and photo's were scanned on a Canon flatbed scanner. It took me some time to decide to share the photo's. The quality is not always great, nor razor sharp. But anyway: I hope you like it.
Our port of entry and the start of our journey was Hangzhou International Airport. We remember Hangzhou as a big village with 1,5 mln people. But the almost total absence of cars and other vehicles, for us westerners gave it a sense of a village.
We traveled in a group and we were not entirely free to go where we liked. The "Party" directed an important part of our itinerary and they had a tight schedule. So visits to factories, comunal farms and schools were part of the program throughout our trip. These pictures were taken in a silk factory where the cocoons where spun into yarns.
Around the Lingyin Buddha Temple.
Entering the Lingyin Buddha Temple.
Shanghai street scenes:
We visited the Wall on my wife's birthday October 28th and it was a cold day with an arid air and winds blowing all the way from Mongolia.
Hope you like it. To be continued.
